As the New Year begins I align myself with the company's goals, the cities plans and my team's plans.  The company wants to go back to basics.  I thought I never left them until I started reviewing old training sessions and manuals.  I was surprised how far from the basics we actually strayed.  If you are successful, it is easy to fall into the trap of feeling you are doing everything right.  The good news it is not hard to make adjustments, it just takes time & effort.

The city plans are to win the Malcolm Baldrige award for superior customer service.  Since they were a two time winner and the first city ever to win the Governors Sterling Award for Excellence in performance, I'd say they are a shoe-in.  Coral Springs leadership is very focused on customer service.  I like how the city government is run and how my taxes stay lower than other nearby cities.  I don't always agree with their decisions, but overall it is a good working plan.  Probably the best part is that if there is a problem, be it with the youth, traffic or retail, they do not stick there heads in the sand.  They are proactive in fixing whatever is wrong.  One of the best and recent examples was Hurricane Wilma.  When other cities were struggling to come back to life, Coral Springs was operating strong.  They had the resources such as portable traffic lights and were able to pay for the trash hauling of the amazing amount of debris.  Once all was repaired they re-gained their costs by loaning their portable traffic lights to other cities.  Now that is good business.

My team plans......While other Realtors cried from the decline in sales last year, there were those of us that knew a correction would come and we would be ready.  It is a painful process to go from a major jump in income and production to a major decline.  To understand that it was necessary in order for housing to remain affordable makes it a little easier to take.  The issue still remains that our property insurance rates and homeowners insurance rates are out of control.  I believe that Lori Parrish and her Tax Assessor Team is also proactive and hard at work on a solution, such as "portability" (more on that later).  The new Governor, Charlie Crist has called for a special session to get the insurance problem under control.  I have not decided how I feel about what is being done yet, but at least something is being done.

Back to the basics.....For us one thing never changes and that is the way we serve our clients real estate needs with the best in customer service and follow up.  We can not be all things to all people.  DARN!  That won't stop us from trying to be the best at what we do.  Serving people's real estate needs in Broward and Palm Beach Counties.